only the heartbroken
by loveislouder94
Summary: It would have been beautiful, if it wasn't so tragic.


**Warning: Mentions of self-harm.**

"Glory is a word only the heartbroken know by heart." – Andrea Gibson

Not all fairy tales have happy endings.

They were supposed to be a fairy tale, the three of them, and they were supposed to have a happy ending. They were supposed to save the school (and live to tell the tale.) But there are only two of them now. There's no Harry, Ron and Hermione any longer. There's just Ron and Hermione, and a cold, rotting corpse that used to be Harry.

Soon, there won't be a Ron and Hermione, either, because Hermione is slipping away, little by little.

At first, she's furious. "Why?" she asks Ron over and over again. "Why did Harry have to die? The mystery was solved, Voldemort was gone, Ginny was awake, and Harry – Harry should be here! If Fawkes had been there a few seconds earlier, if we'd spoken to Myrtle sooner, if _I'd _figured it out sooner - "

Ron tries his best to console her, repeating that there was nothing that she or any of them could have done. He listens to her rage at herself and the world as patiently as he can. They still bicker – they're Ron and Hermione, bickering ties them together as much as it divides them.

Their fights get less and less frequent, though, as Hermione grows ever quieter. While the war against Voldemort continues, she goes to war with herself. He rises in their fourth year, through the use of a complex spell about which Dumbledore explains and Hermione doesn't listen. He falls later, at Dumbledore's hand, and Hermione receives the news with only a smidgeon of relief. Her own fight rages ever more intensely.

Her parents are killed at the beginning of her fifth year, the innocent victims of cruel and senseless Death Eater attacks. No one says that her previous association with Harry is the cause, or that she should have protected them, but no one has to. Sometimes the most destructive words come from within.

.~.

It starts out as something small and innocuous, most addictions do. She'll pinch her hand or her leg, making sure she's not dreaming, making sure she's concentrating. Red crescent marks blossom on her skin, but soon pinching isn't enough.

.~.

"Hermione? Mum's made breakfast for everyone down in the kitchen. We weren't sure if you were going to get up or not, so we've kept it warm, and if you're not up in a bit, I'll bring it up to you, okay?"

She doesn't answer, but burrows deeper into her blankets, curling into an even tighter ball beneath them. She's not moving just because he's asked her. She'll get up when she wants to – if she wants to – and she'll do it on her own terms. There's no point in getting up, anyway. Nothing will change, nothing will get better.

Sighing, Ron reaches into the nest she's made herself and places a quick, tentative kiss on the top of her head. The bed springs creak as he rises, and his footsteps sound especially heavy and loud in the silence.

Once she's sure he's gone, she moves slowly towards the bathroom, bracing herself against the sink with her head bowed. Raising her face to the mirror, she has to supress a shriek. Harry stands behind her on one side, her parents on the other.

They are horrifying, grotesque versions of themselves, pale and rotted, with empty sockets where their eyes should be. "Hermione," they whisper to her, "why didn't you save us? We would have saved _you_…"

"I'm sorry," she whimpers, "I'm so sorry I couldn't save you. Why are you here? Why are you doing this to me? Leave me alone!"

Her shouts summon Ron, who seizes her by the shoulders and fearfully implores her to tell him what's going on.

"Can't you see them? Harry and my mum and dad, they're right there!" She's shouting in his face, hysterical and far too panicked to care, pointing wildly to the place where they'd been standing. "They're – they're gone now, but they were there! I saw them, you have to believe me!"

"Hermione," Ron says gently, wiping away her tears and pushing her hair out of her eyes, "there's nothing there. I think you just need to calm down, have something to eat and stop blaming yourself for what happened. It's not your fault."

It's not her fault, but that doesn't matter. Guilt doesn't discriminate, it doesn't care about technicalities. It poisons and devours and destroys. It's eating away at Hermione Granger, and she can't stop it. She doesn't deserve to stop it.

She sees them often after that, the ones who died. In her dreams, as the reflections in water or the mirror, out of the corner of her eye, wherever she goes, whatever she does, they're there.

.~.

Everyone can see she's falling apart, and they try everything they know to hold her up. No-one sees that the only way she can keep herself together is to slice her limbs to red ribbons.

.~.

Nights are the worst. The solitude suffocates her. "Do you want us to go away, Hermione?" The spectres ask her. "Well, you know what to do…"

She doesn't stop to think, acting with an impulsive desperation. She's in a trance, and when she wakes up she's not quite sure what she's done.

Her wrist is bleeding heavily – far more heavily than any wound has before, and she simply watches in stunned fascination as red rivulets snake down her arm and droplets sprinkle the carpet like rain. It would have been beautiful, if it wasn't so tragic.

The door bursts open with a bang, and Ron is there, flanked by the other Weasleys.

"HERMIONE!" There is so much pain and fear and love contained in that single word, and it breaks her. She has seen too much pain, too much death. _Too much. _She summons a small, genuine smile for Ron, and her vision fades to a blissful black.

.~.

A tall, gangly man enters the room cautiously, as if unsure of what he might find within.

"Hey," he begins, trying to be casual and only succeeding in looking pained. "Do you know where you are?"

The emaciated young woman strapped to the bed shakes her head in confusion.

"You're in St. Mungo's, you're in the hospital. Do you know why you're here?"

She shakes her head again, and frustrated tears spring to her eyes. Why does nothing make sense? The man draws in a shaky breath; he seems to be fighting tears himself.

"We brought you here to – to keep you safe."

At this, she tries to speak. It takes a few seconds, as though her mind isn't sure how to form the words "Safe from what?"

"Yourself."

.~.

The tall man comes to visit her nearly every day. Sometimes he tries to talk to her, and sometimes they simply sit together. He holds her hand and watches her with a tenderness her mind tells her is love.

He consults with the people in the green robes each time before he leaves, quietly, thinking she won't hear.

"How is she?" he asks, his voice tinged with a desperate hope.

"The same," they inevitably answer. "There's been no improvement. She's lost, and every day she stays that way it becomes less and less likely she'll ever come back. In cases of extreme trauma, like this one, patients will disassociate and disconnect from reality as a defence mechanism. Unfortunately, the only thing we can really do is keep her comfortable and prevent her from hurting herself any further."

He leaves hunched over like an old man, defeated and destroyed.

.~.

Harry Potter is dead. Hermione Granger is mad. Ron Weasley is alone.

This is the tragedy they have become, the closest thing to glory they will ever know.

**Written for:**

**The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. (Holyhead Harpies, Chaser 1. Prompts: glory, blankets, bleeding heavily)**  
**The Hogwarts Classes Category Competition: Arithmancy**  
**The Fantastic Beasts Challenge: Dugbog**  
**Story beginnings Challenge**  
**Florence + the Machine Challenge: Seven Devils**  
**Different Genre Competition**  
**The Sherlock Competition: Episode 1, prompt 3.  
The Disney Movie Plotline Competition: Cinderella  
The All Sorts of Love Competition: Angsty Love**

**This was an AU where Harry died in the Chamber of Secrets, in case it wasn't clear. Thanks for reading!**


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